Armed gang members attacked displaced people sheltering inside a church near Haiti’s capital over the weekend, killing at least 47 people and kidnapping more than 50 others, the United Nations said Tuesday, in what officials described as one of the largest mass kidnappings in Haiti in recent years.
The death toll rose as the investigation continued. Kenscoff Mayor Massillon Jean, referred to in some reports as Jean Massillon, initially told Agence France-Presse on Monday that around 40 bodies had been counted, with searches ongoing and some people still missing. By Tuesday, the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti, known as BINUH, confirmed the toll had risen to at least 47, including at least five children. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said 22 of the victims were reportedly executed inside the church compound where they had sought shelter.
Jean described Sunday night’s attack as a night of terror in a town that has faced months of gang violence. “The bandits raided a displaced persons camp located in a church. They executed several people,” Jean said. Gang members also set fire to 25 homes and killed two government employees, including a member of Jean’s own security detail who was his cousin, he told the Associated Press.
What We Know So Far
The attack took place in Kenscoff, a mountainous municipality in the hills above Port-au-Prince that has faced sporadic gang incursions since the first major attack there in January 2025. Sunday’s assault was the largest yet in the area, according to the AP.
A man identifying himself as Izo 2, also known as “Didi,” claimed responsibility for leading the attack in a video posted to social media, threatening Haiti’s National Police Director Vladimir Paraison over the fate of the kidnapped hostages. “Paraison, if any of our soldiers are hurt, I will kill all of them,” he said. Romain Le Cour, head of the Haiti Observatory at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, said Izo 2 leads the Kenscoff based armed group on behalf of and in coordination with Izo, or Johnson André, one of Haiti’s most powerful gang leaders.
Some survivors have accused the government of failing to provide adequate protection ahead of the attack, an accusation Haiti’s National Police has rejected. Le Cour said that if police and armored vehicles were indeed already stationed in Kenscoff before the attack, the failure to prevent it would raise serious concerns about the response.
The office of Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé issued a statement expressing deep compassion for victims’ families and announced that security reinforcements would be sent to the area.
Why This Matters
Sunday’s attack undercuts recent claims that security conditions in Haiti were beginning to improve, arriving as the country prepares for general elections scheduled for December 13, its first in more than a decade. Le Cour said the attack represents a major political and security test for the government, police and the U.N.-backed international security mission alike, and suggested the gang’s threat to execute hostages functions as a trap: security forces face blame for inaction if they hold back, and blame from the gangs themselves if intervention leads to hostage deaths.
María Fernanda Arocha, a researcher with the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, said gangs have targeted Kenscoff because controlling it allows them to surround the upscale community of Pétion-Ville and dominate alternate routes linking the capital to Haiti’s southern region. She said security operations had reduced violence in Kenscoff by 66 percent between January and August before Sunday’s attack, but that gangs have increasingly expanded into vulnerable rural communities as police concentrate their limited resources on central Port-au-Prince.
The attack adds to a broader humanitarian crisis engulfing Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas. Armed groups control an estimated 70 percent of Port-au-Prince and swaths of territory in the country’s central region and beyond. Nearly 1.5 million Haitians are currently displaced nationwide, and more than 5 million face severe food insecurity, according to U.N. figures. Separate U.N. data released Tuesday found more than 3,050 people were killed nationwide between January and June, with about 1,400 injured, nearly 800 rapes reported between April and June, and at least 81 kidnappings reported over the same period, a figure the U.N. cautioned likely undercounts the true total since many families negotiate directly with kidnappers rather than involving police.
Haiti has not held elections since 2016. Its last president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in July 2021 and has not been replaced, and the country’s political instability deepened further in early 2024 when a wave of gang violence forced the country’s unelected prime minister to resign.
What Happens Next
Government reinforcements are being deployed to Kenscoff in response to the attack, though it remains unclear how authorities intend to secure the release of the more than 50 people still held by the gang without triggering the retaliation threatened by Izo 2. Searches for additional victims and missing residents were continuing as of the latest reporting.
Mayor Jean said he remains optimistic that the state will continue working to eradicate gang activity in Kenscoff despite the scale of Sunday’s attack. “The atrocity of this crime reminds us that we have to continue working stronger every day to bring peace to the community,” Jean said. With general elections scheduled for December, the government’s response to the attack is likely to face continued scrutiny as a test of its broader security claims ahead of the vote.
Reporting drawn from the Associated Press and Le Monde, citing AFP
